FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT YOUTH PASTOR - PAGE 5

Taylor Stinchcomb's parents offered her a choice on her 13th birthday. They would lease a horse for her to ride or allow her to bring home a dog. She went with the dog. Stinchcomb's family said she adopted a 4-year-old Doberman pinscher from an animal shelter and named him Romulus. The two were inseparable; neighbors saw them walking through their Gurnee subdivision practically every day, a huge, contented smile on Stinchcomb's face. After two happy years, Romulus became ill with cancer and the family discussed putting the dog to sleep.

A Lake County grand jury Wednesday indicted a Waukegan business owner in the shooting death of a woman who complained she was bitten by his family's dog, a prosecutor said. Jesus Diaz, 45, was indicted on two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting death of 27-year-old Carmen Sola of Waukegan, said Assistant State's Atty. Michael Mermel. Diaz was released from Lake County Jail after posting 10 percent of $1 million bond Friday. The shooting occurred on July 4 after Sola began arguing with two of Diaz's sons--apparently yelling and throwing bottles at them--behind his businesses, according to authorities.

Just say no Thank you for your wonderfully written and well-balanced article on abstinence ("Let's talk about [not having] sex," April 20). It is refreshing to read an article on a sensitive subject that has no obvious agenda. I have witnessed the aftermath of teens who become pregnant and choose to terminate their pregnancies. Most of these women embark on a life-long search to heal their wounds of sorrow and shame. Taylor Moore courageously offers an option to teens to avoid this potential pain and suffering.

Rev. Peter W. Fu, 74, founder and pastor from 1959 to 1990 of the Chicago Chinese Baptist Church, also served the City of Chicago Department of Public Works as a coordinating engineer for 34 years, retiring in 1991. A resident of the Norwood Park neighborhood, he died Thursday in Forest Villa Nursing Home in Niles. "He was not someone who sat on the fence," his son Timothy said, "but rather a pro-active example to others in care, leadership and good deeds. His efforts can be seen not only in the many roads and buildings he help construct in Chicago and in the changed lives of his church members but also in the Chinese community, his relatives and his family."

As the summer kayaking season kicked off its first weekend, three men drowned near the Glen D. Palmer Dam on the Fox River in Yorkville, a notoriously dangerous spot that state officials have been preparing to fix for two years. The accident occurred about 1 p.m. Saturday, when two brothers tried to rescue Villa Park resident Craig Fliege, 38, who had rowed his kayak too close to the edge of the dam. Bruce Sperling, 32, a youth pastor at a church in Lombard, and Mark Sperling, 27, owner of a home construction business, noticed Fliege caught in the whirlpool-like currents and ran into the river to try to save him, officials said.

Samuel Lee, 70, who survived savage fighting during the Korean War to create a college-based missionary group that spread throughout the world, died Tuesday, Jan. 8, in Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge. Mr. Lee's mother died when he was an infant, and he endured a tough childhood in Korea, said his friend Mark Vucekovich. One of the few glimmers of fun came when an American missionary arrived to preach in his village. Mr. Lee and his friends gleefully mocked the man's Korean mispronunciations, but the Biblical message nonetheless made an impression.

Wearing neat, button-down shirts, the two men standing before Lake County Judge James Booras on Tuesday seemed out of place among other defendants dressed in jail garb and T-shirts in his courtroom. But the charges filed against the two men were far more severe than those against the parade of defendants whom Booras saw before he cast an inquisitive eye on James Kerr, 41, and Neil Taylor, 35. Authorities allege that Kerr and Taylor used their leadership positions in a Zion church and parochial school to seduce an unidentified 15-year-old female student with whom they had sex on several occasions.

To Fox Valley Church youth pastor Larry Lloyd, the biggest difference between the new building and the Jacobs High School auditorium where the congregation worshiped for 22 years is, now it's so quiet. Some of the distractions at Jacobs, in Algonquin, were just annoying--like loud air-conditioner blowers and ongoing renovation projects. Others were downright disruptive, like calls for custodians over the school's public address system during the morning message. Lloyd compared meeting at Jacobs to living in a college dorm room, "where you lived there, but it really wasn't yours."

Warning: This article contains sexually oriented adult content, verbal descriptions of nude adults and the unusual partnership of a pastor and a porn star. Rev. Craig Gross, a former youth pastor and founder of xxxchurch.com, will bring his anti-porn crusade to Chicago on Monday at Lakeshore Theater when he takes the stage opposite longtime porn star Ron Jeremy for "The Great Porn Debate." On tour together for the last few years, Gross promotes his ministry while Jeremy defends his industry, which he says has been unfairly targeted for years by the Christian right as shameful.

A cool day in Naperville, the audience's American-style clothes and the lack of language barriers created a vivid contrast for the 38 teen members of Destiny, which performed last week at the Riverwalk after an international tour. The Naperville-based group had returned recently from Mexico and Guatemala, where they shared their Christian message through singing, dramatic skits and puppet shows. The lunch hour concert at the Riverwalk amphitheater was the final performance for the group, which had united teens from 13 states for the tour.